4. Consensus Reviews of Journals in the Group
4.1 History
4.1.8 Yesterday and Today
about what a good editorial introduction should contain. This should include a substantiated rationale and an overview of the individual contributions and how they are linked.
Panel’s consensus view:
i. The journal should continue to be listed on the DHET accredited list.
ii. The journal should be invited to join the SciELO SA platform should its relationship with publishers change and become open access.
iii. The Panel recommends that the Editors should solicit more articles in particular areas, such as on innovative research methodologies in historical investigations.
4.1.8 Yesterday and Today
The journal currently performs very well internationally, because of its open accessibility and availability to readers on platforms such as SciELO SA, Boloka (the open access institutional repository of the NWU), the DOAJ and the SASHT.
Editing functions:
(Standing, local institutional spread, international participation)
Consensus review: The Editor-in-Chief and Assistant Editor are both known academics in the field, but they are both from the same institution (NWU), although one is in History Education and the other in the History Department. The Editorial Board includes local and international academics of high standing, as well as representatives from schools, which is useful given the journal’s focus. It also may be useful to include a second Assistant Editor from a different institution to ensure more diversity.
Questionnaire:
(Editorial process-related criteria)
The journal was founded in 1981 with the title Yesterday and Today: Magazine for History Teaching / Gister en Vandag: Tydskrif vir Geskiedenisonderrig. Because of financial constraints, it ceased to exist in 1997. In 2006 an effort was made to revive the journal, and it was successfully re-launched as Yesterday & Today. Since then all articles have been published in English only. The journal received accreditation from the DHET in January 2012. It is published biannually in July and December of each year. There have been no interruptions of any nature in the publication process.
The journal is available online on the following links: http://sashtw.org.za/?page_id=1763 (SASHT’s website); http://dspace.nwu.ac.za/handle/10394/5126 (Boloka); and http://www.scielo.org.za/
scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=2223-0386 (SciELO SA platform). The total number of visits since 2010 is 2670. For the period August 2017 to February 2018, the journal was visited 162 times. Only these statistics were available in 2018. At the start of 2017, the journal was rated among the top five journals in terms of the average number of documents views the journal has had in the SciELO SA collection.
In the five-year period from 2013 to 2017, the journal was cited 177 times (source: https://scholar.
google.com/citations?hl=en&user=x9upRlwAAAA).
The journal was read in more than 10 countries including the USA, Russia, Germany, France, China, UK, Canada, Netherlands, and Ukraine. It was also read in eight other African countries in addition to South Africa: Namibia, Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Tanzania, Rwanda, Swaziland, and Lesotho.
From January 2012 (first year of accreditation) to December 2017, 68 scientific research articles were published covering 1 532 pages in total and 31 hands-on articles covering 280 pages in total. From 2015 to 2017, 36 scientific research articles were published covering 780 pages and 16 hands-on articles covering 112 pages. The annual keynote addresses served as review articles during the past years. This is a section that the Editorial Board can perhaps explore and invest in more constructively.
From January 2015 to December 2017, 14 book reviews were published. The Editorial Board originally only reviewed publications of value to history teaching and learning. Recently, a broader variety of publications useful in a classroom situation has been reviewed. This is also a section that the Editorial Board will improve on. The number of keynote addresses at the annual conferences of the SASHT Teaching from January 2015 to December 2017 was only two. A number of presidential speeches at the SASHT’s annual conferences from January 2015 to December 2017 were also published. Other papers published from January 2015 to December 2017 include one research report; two regional reports; and two conference summaries of the SASHT by the chairperson. The number of manuscripts received from 2015 to 2017 was 19 full articles, two review articles, 15 book reviews, one research report and two conference summaries of the SASHT annual conferences by the chairperson. One or two of the manuscripts were rejected without peer review. If submissions are made that fall outside of the focus and scope of the journal, the Editor will reject the manuscripts immediately. In most cases, the submitted manuscripts were presented according to the guidelines of the journal. Therefore,
manuscripts normally are sent to peer reviewers for review. In terms of full articles, six were rejected after peer review. No rejections occurred in the other listed categories. The number of peer-reviewed papers that had at least one author with a non-South African address was 15.
Two peer reviewers are usually approached for each submitted manuscript. However, if a discourse on the outcome arises, a third reviewer will be approached. If there are appropriate experts on the Editorial Board regarding the topic of the manuscript, they will be the first choice as peer reviewers.
Otherwise, the Editor-in-Chief will submit a manuscript to an appropriate expert(s) nationally or internationally. Reviewers who do not respond to the Editor’s request will not be used again. A double- blind peer review process is followed. The reviewers are not informed about the identity of the author(s) or their affiliations/institutions. The reviewers also remain anonymous throughout the review process and beyond. When the peer reviewers are chosen and they accept the review assignment, they are provided with a peer-assessment form to be completed. Once the Editor receives the completed peer-review form from the reviewers, he will assess them collectively, and then make a decision, either on his own or in consultation with the Assistant Editor. The Editor will then inform the author about the outcome of the manuscript, whether it was accepted/rejected or invited to be resubmitted in the case of major or minor revisions. In the latter case, where manuscripts are accepted pending revision, the authors must resubmit the revised manuscript which will then go through all, or some, of the above review stages again. Once a manuscript has been revised satisfactorily, it will be officially accepted and prepared for publication. Peer reviewers receive follow-up information. The Editor re- assigns the manuscripts to the original peer reviewers in the case of revisions to assess whether the recommended improvements as specified on the peer-assessment form were diligently attended to.
Reviewer performance is assessed, and information is captured in a database. A database is kept of each and every peer-assessment form received from the peer reviewers. This allows the Editor and Assistant Editor to assess the reviewers’ performance on a continuous basis. In 2017, 18 peer reviewers were used. The number of these reviewers who had non-South African addresses was two. The peer review reports are accessibly retained in the journal’s records. The average period between receipt of a manuscript and its publication is six months for both print and online.
The Editor has been in office for the past three and a half years. The Editor had been a member of the Editorial Board of the journal intermittently since 1992. He was then appointed as Editor by the members of the Editorial Advisory Board in January 2014 and accepted the position from August 2014. The appointment period was from August 2014 to August 2018 (four years). Members of the Editorial Board handle peer review and advise on editorial policies and practices. Deliberations on aspects pertaining to the journal normally take place at the annual Editorial Advisory Board meeting in August/September of each year. The term of office for members of the Editorial Board is three to four years after which new members are nominated and, if available, appointed, and current members can be re-nominated, if willing to be re-appointed. Members of the Editorial Board are nominated by the existing Board and formally approached. If willing, and after submitting their CVs, the Editorial Board discusses and decides on the merits of appointments. The level of expertise in the subject matter and the need for a diverse representation of Board members normally are criteria in the final selection process. Board members are appointed from inside as well as outside of the country. Currently, the Editorial Board has several international members, and in terms of the national representation, a balance between educators on FET and HET levels is sustained.
The journal has editorial guidelines which can be accessed from this link: http://sashtw.org.za/wp- content/uploads/2017/08/YT_18_Dec-2017-edition.pdf pp. 156-165. There is no conflict-of-interest policy. The journal guidelines are aligned with ASSAf’s Code of Best Practice in Scholarly Journal Publishing, Editing and Peer Review, although the Editorial Board of the journal is still in the process of developing a legal retraction policy that ASSAf undertook to assist the journal with. The publication of errata has never been necessary, but if an erratum does occur, it will be addressed in the following issue. A policy based on legal principles is necessary to properly manage errata (and retractions).
The journal is in the process of developing such a policy.
The journal publishes value-added features such as critical editorials; ‘news and views’ analyses of the articles published; and analytical book reviews. In terms of this category, the journal is adding value to the intellectual debate and contributes to the discourse and developments in the field of history. However, there is room for improvement. The percentage of pages in each issue that represents peer-reviewed original material is 75%.
Content:
(Quality, focus, spread within domain, sample of best work in SA, enrichment features)
Consensus review: The majority of papers deal with issues related to history education methodology and pedagogy. As such, the journal fills a relevant niche market. The articles are interesting, generally well written, and relevant to the journal’s theme and the South African context.
Essential technical features:
(English abstracts, errata, citation practice, presentation)
Consensus review: The technical aspects are handled in a professional manner.
Usefulness in capacity development, and international comparability:
Consensus review: The journal provides an important platform for high-quality debates about the state and future of History education in South Africa and Africa. There are indications that the journal has become an outlet for international contributors. It is suitable as a general ongoing stimulus for local graduate students/young staff in the discipline concerned.
Business aspects:
(Business-related criteria; bibliometric assessments)
The NWU is the guardian of the journal and promotes the publishing of the journal, and, in many ways, does so independently from the SASHT as the actual owner. The journal Editorial Board therefore also annually reports to the SASHT. The regular print run is 150 per issue. The production is outsourced, but the distribution is internally managed and operated. The journal does not carry any advertising. Some financial support is provided by the NWU, but in the long term, the plan is to secure the financially independence of the journal through APCs alone.
There are 150 paying subscribers. The journal currently performs very well internationally, because of its open accessibility and availability to readers through platforms such as SciELO SA, Boloka, DOAJ and the SASHT. The journal charges APCs of R220 per page, but hands-on articles, keynote addresses, and international contributions are not charged. The editorial workflow is managed using an online management system, articles are uploaded to the web, and a manual system is also used. The journal is freely accessible online.
There have been offers to purchase the journal from multinational publishers. Copyright on all material published in the journal resides within the Editorial Advisory Board. Educational and fair use copying of the materials in the journal for research and not for profit is permitted. There is no licensing agreement with the authors, other than their declaration that the article is original and has not been previously published in any other peer-reviewed journal, or that it is not under consideration by any other journal. The authors are aware of the journals’ open access associations.
The journal appears on Boloka; Google Scholar; and SciELO SA. According to SciELO SA, the impact factor for journal citation reports on a three-year basis (2014-2016) was 0.0426. There are altmetric indicators. The ‘front details’ for papers and English abstracts are mandatory. The journal was independently reviewed in 2011 when application was made for accreditation from the DHET.
Suggested improvements:
Consensus review: Educators in History, the intended readership for the journal, would find more book reviews useful in terms of guiding their reading of academic history. It is recommended that the Board should consider whether abstracts in English and French may not broaden the journal’s appeal significantly.
Panel’s consensus view:
i. The journal should continue to be listed on the DHET accredited list.
ii. The journal is already on the SciELO SA platform.
iii. The Panel recommends that the Editors should consider strategies to broaden the significant appeal of the journal for scholars in other African countries.